"Contemporary History After 9.11" by Keiko Sakai (Kodansha Gendai Shinsho). Today also on a book by Ms. Sakai. In this book, she traces the background of civil wars and conflicts, especially the IS (Islamic State) which arose after 9.11, in the Middle East. In so doing, she considers the points at issue. 

After the Iraq war stemming from 9.11, the conflicts in the Middle East region have become increasingly violent, while the motives of the conflicts are even more convoluted, which is not only creating a chain of negative reactions, but also affecting the people outside of that region. To break such a negative chain, she suggests focusing more on "How we can coexist" rather than "How to contain the force by force". I feel this is a very important suggestion that we should think about. 

By looking at the background of IS, we can see that by overly hurried democratization after the Iraq war, the majority of Iraq people were discarded, which resulted in deteriorating the public security and growing frustration, although Hussein disapproval was widespread in Iraq and therefore there were not much resistance to the coalition forces. 

Other countries in the Middle East hastily responded to "Global counterterrorism campaign" by the president Bush, by bringing democracy and disarmament. On the other hand, increasing hostility toward the Islam and Muslims triggered anti-Muslim hate crimes, due to which Muslim people's frustration d hatred were directed to America. 

There were non-violent fights seeking for democratization, the Arab Spring from the end of 2010 to 2011. But there were very few countries that succeeded, and many ended up with further dependence in violence, falling into authoritarianism and police state. 

In each case, the situation was led to complication not only by the political-economic situations but also by the conflicts with surrounding countries or ethnic groups, furthermore by the intervention policy of the global community. If we bracket these conflicts together as sectarian struggles or ethnic problems, we will lose sight of the real reason. There are too many conflicts such as Syrian Civil War, Kurdish conflict, Iran–Saudi Arabia proxy conflict. In the sea of conflicts between deemed enemies such as pro-establishments, dissidents, terrorists, the Palestinian problem is not as a focal issue as it once was. The harder the complication of the issue becomes, the more tenuous connection the object of hostility would have. As it is hard to find the real cause, it becomes harder to figure out the fundamental solution. Then even civilians are seen as a threat, when the influx of refugees into Europe dramatically increased since 2014. 

Being stuck in such situation, there still seems to be a hope as referred in the end of this book: a college professor in Mosul, Iraq, who has been acting as a blogger. He kept dispatching the information even while Mosul was under IS control. After the liberation from IS, he is calling on not blame and punish the families of IS members.